Ophelia
Arthur Rimbaud
Helen Warner
On waters still and black where the stars are sleeping,
White Ophelia is floating like a great lily
Floating most slowly in her long veils laying…
– In distant woods one hears the call of the hallali.
David Galstyan
For more than a thousand years Ophelia with sadness
Has gone, a white ghost, down the long black river
For more than a thousand years, her soft madness
Does to the evening breeze her romance whisper.
John Everett Millais
The wind kisses her breasts and unfolds a corolla
Of great veils rocked smoothly by the water’s flow ;
The shivering willows weep on her shoulder
Over her great dreamy brow the reeds bend low.
Elena Kalis
Creased nenuphars are all around her sighing ;
She disturbs sometimes in sleeping alder trees
Some nest where the shiver escapes from a wing
– From golden stars there fall strange melodies.
Sabina TabakovicO pale Ophelia ! Beautiful as snow!
You died a child by a stream taken violently
For winds had spoken to you soft and low,
Falling from Norway’s mountains, about harsh liberty ;
Alexandre Cabanel
For a breath of air, twisting your locks thick and long,
Brought strange noises to your spirit dreaming tight ;
For your heart listened to nature’s song
In the pleas of trees and the sighs of night ;
Jason Beam
For the mad sea’s voice, immense groan of the dying,
Shattered your childish breast too human and too sweet ;
For a pale and handsome rider, on an April morning,
A poor fool, sat dumb at your feet !
Zerno Roli
Heavens ! Love ! Liberty ! Poor mad girl, a dream is each !
You melted with him as the snow in a blaze :
Your great visions were strangling your speech
– And terrible Infinity alarmed your blue gaze !
– And the poet says that under stars all shining
For the flowers you gather you come lately,
And that he has seen on the water, in her long veils laying,
White Ophelia floating like a great lily.
(translated by James Harriman-Smith)
Toni Frissell
Where the wild roses grow by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds/Kylie Minogue
